The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

CHAP. VIII] OF SCOTLAND 135
ricall}- opposed to the real history. The historical facts
contained in Ossian relate principally to Ireland, and the
difference between the Ossianic system and that generall}-
believed may be stated in a very few words. The system
maintained by the Irish writers is, that Ireland was inhabited
by one race of people termed Scots, who are said to have
come from Spain : that they divided Ireland into four provinces,
Ulster, Leinster, Afunster, and Connaught, each of
which was governed by a petty king of the Scottish race :
over these kings was placed a monarch, who reigned at Fara,
in Meath, and these monarchs were all of the same Scottish
line, and can be traced from father to son. The Ossianic
system is very different from this. According to Ossian,
Ireland was inhabited by two races of people : the south of
Ireland was possessed by a people termed by him Firbolg ;
the north by Gael, who came originally from Scotland. These
two peoples, according to Ossian, were constantly at war with
in the second century the Firbolgs, by a
each other ; and
series of victories having obtained possession of the greater
part of Ireland, Conar, the brother of the King in Scotland,
came over to the assistance of the Gael, and driving the
Firbolgs out of the northern part of Ireland, founded a race
of kings, who ruled in Temora or Tara, in Meath. The kings
of the race of Conar remained on the throne till the middle
of the third century, when the Firbolgs, under the command
of Cairpre, again obtained the upper hand.
These systems of history are, it will be observed, diamet-
rically opposed to each other, but if it should appear that the
system of Irish history, now believed,
is not older than the
fourteenth century, and that the history contained in the Irish
Annals before that time is identic with that of Ossian ; and
if it should also appear that these older annals were unpublished,
and inaccessible at the time Ossian was published, and
even for centuries before that time, and that the very existence
of a different system being contained in these older annals
was unknown, it is plain, not only that this objection must
fall to the ground, but that it must follow, as an incontestable
proposition, that these poems were not the work of Macpherson,
but must have been older, at least, than the fourteenth centur}'.